


i've seen the man in the mirror (he's flipping pancakes)

by mouseymightymarvellous



Series: cicadas chirping in the dark and moths around the porch light (you come home) [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Obito's love language is gifts of food, Team as Family, The Uchiha Cousin Gossip Network, universe hopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29935344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseymightymarvellous/pseuds/mouseymightymarvellous
Summary: Obito has seen his doppelgänger and is convinced this is an omen of his death. No one else seems particularly worried.ft: sleep overs, breakfast foods, insults against obito's Person, ungrateful hokages, and betrayal.
Relationships: Obito & Team Minato
Series: cicadas chirping in the dark and moths around the porch light (you come home) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1486949
Comments: 15
Kudos: 22





	i've seen the man in the mirror (he's flipping pancakes)

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to eruditeempress without whom this silliness would not have come into being. Also, prompt fills might have me accidentally turning into a fluff/crack writer.

**i. rin**

“Rin! Psst, Rin!”

Rin is a Kind and Generous person, and Rin is also a half-decent sensor within two metres, so she Kindly and Generously does not finish stabbing Obito with the kunai shekeeps under her pillow and instead simply leaves the point of the blade tucked neatly into the hinge of his jaw.

“What?” Rin demands. Or, well, it’s less a word than a mashed up sound, but Obito has years of practice deciphering Rin’s grunts when she’s survived another weeklong overnight rotation in the hospital ER.

“Hey, Rin,” Obito whispers. “You’re a scientist and shit: if I’ve seen my doppelgänger, does it really mean that I’m going to die soon?”

“Obito,” Rin says very calmly, “did you wake me up in the middle of the night when I just spent eight hours in surgery trying to keep a genin team alive to ask me if you’re going to die because you saw someone who looks like you when you belong to a clan with several hundred people who look like you and you live in a ninja village where people can cast illusions to look like anybody?”

And, really, Kakashi must have broken into Rin’s apartment again to sharpen her kunai, because she never usually remembers to keep her weapons this sharp. His shirt is going to be stained, and he’s been banned from visiting Auntie Mayumi’s laundry since that incident with the nincats so he’s never going to get the blood out.

“…Yes? But, Rin! I swear this was a real doppelgänger. I mean, okay, he had white hair, and different scars, and—“

“Obito,” Rin interrupts, “I love you, but if you don’t let me go back to sleep right now, then I swear to all the gods and ancestors that it doesn’t matter if you really saw your doppelgänger or not, I will kill you.”

Obito shuts his mouth.

Rin lets the kunai slip away and tucks it back under her pillow.

“Steal all my blankets again and they’ll never find your body,” she tells him before turning onto her other side and falling straight back into sleep.

Obito crosses his arms over his chest and pouts.

He is not a blanket hog. Out of the three of them, Rin knows full well that Kakashi is the blanket hog.

Rin’s pillows are really quite comfortable. Obito never wakes up with a sore neck after sleeping in Rin’s bed; she’s been all about ergonomic furniture ever since her first stint in the physio department all those years back.

Obito pushes himself further into the pillow and draws the blankets up around his shoulders.

He’s safe from his death omen here. The only way Rin would let him die in her bed is if she was the one killing him. Obito can live with that.

**ii. kushina**

Rin, like an alarming percentage of the Konoha Medical Corps, survives primarily off of cheap take out, hospital cafeteria food, and leftovers in friends’ refrigerators. Normally Obito would go do some grocery shopping to fill up her bare pantry and cook her breakfast, but he’s a little afraid that if he wakes Rin up before she’s slept a minimum of twelve hours, even for breakfast, that she will murder him.

Which is why he’s in Minato-sensei’s kitchen cooking breakfast, instead.

Well, technically it’s Kushina-neesan’s kitchen also, but Kushina-neesan’s motto for the various shinobi who drop by to eat her groceries is “If you can eat and bitch, you can cook and bitch” and Obito has seen no evidence over the last decade and a half that Kushina-neesan actually knows how to turn to stove on.

Minato-sensei is busy at the Tower with an early morning meeting, but Kushina is happily picking out pieces of freshly cut pear to munch on, still wrapped in her dressing gown, as Obito makes omelettes.

“You’re going to ruin the fruit ratio,” Obito complains as he watches her pick around the berries.

Kushina sniffs dismissively. “People scared of silly superstitions don’t get to judge me on my fruit choices.”

“We live in a weird world!” Obito gestures with his spatula. “You have a tailed-demon in your stomach, why is a doppelgänger out of the realm of possibility?”

“It’s not the doppelgänger I’m struggling with,” Kushina-neesan says. “It’s that just because you think you’ve seen someone who looks like you that you think you’re now marked for death.”

“You didn’t see him. He had a very threatening mien!”

“This is a ninja village, half the population has a ‘threatening mien’!”

Obito glares a her as he flips the omelettes.

Kushina-neesan pops another piece of pear into her mouth. “Are you in my kitchen so that if your doppelgänger shows up and tries to kill you the ANBU team will intervene?”

“I come to your house to cook you a delicious breakfast and this is how I am treated? With lies and slander? Unbelievable! The insult! I am taking my omelettes to someone who deserves them!”

“Oh, Obito-chan,” Kushina laughs, “don’t be like that! I’ll protect you! Just let me eat that omelette, you know I love mushrooms! Those are my mushrooms!”

“Enjoy your pears,” Obito sniffs, packing the food up in a box and hanging up his apron in the cupboard alongside the rest.

“No! Obito-chan! You know you can’t leave your dishes unwashed!” Kushina cries as Obito exits through the kitchen window.

Obito leaves the dishes. If his doppelgänger shows up looking for him, Kushina-neechan can try bullying him into washing them.

**iii. minato**

Obito sidesteps the little genjutsu that Sparrow throws at his feet with a rude gesture.

His cousin gestures back, but otherwise the ANBU team on duty lets Obito climb through the Hokage’s window unmolested.

“Sensei,” Obito sings out, “I brought you breakfast!”

Minato-sensei looks up from his paperwork with a broad smile.

“Breakfast! I love breakfast!”

“I know this,” Obito says, pulling out the boxes and setting one still steaming omelette down, careful of the paperwork strewn across the large desk, “and because I am a Good and Respectful student, I have brought you breakfast because I know you don’t eat before your early morning meetings.”

Minato-sensei happily tucks into the food. “Mmm. This is why you’re my favourite.”

Obito preens.

“Oh, wait, how did you convince Kushina to give up some of her mushrooms? She hates sharing her mushrooms. Never mind, don’t tell me, I want to be completely in the dark when your body goes missing; I would hate to have to arrest my own wife. What would I tell the children?”

Obito wilts and mulishly shoves a bite into his mouth.

Ungrateful Namikazes.

See if he ever cooks them breakfast again.

Well. Naruto-kun loves him, as is his due. Obito will continue to cook Naruto breakfast, because he is a Good and Kind jounin-sensei. (And if he stops cooking breakfast for Naruto, then he’ll have to stop for the whole team or else Sasuke-chan will be unbearable, and Obito can’t do that to Sakura-chan! She loves pancakes so much!)

“What will you tell the children if their poor, beloved sensei gets killed?” Obito asks.

Minato-sensei eats another bite of omelette and thinks about it. “Depends. Did you do something to make Rin threaten you with death, again? You know that I prefer it when you three work out your interpersonal issues on your own, I thought I taught you conflict resolution skills?”

Obito stares at his Hokage, the Yellow Flash, famed and feared shinobi and death-maker.

“No,” he finally says, choosing to omit Rin’s threats in the night, “but I saw my doppelgänger yesterday and I’m pretty sure I’m going to get murdered and replaced in the night.”

“Ah,” Minato-sensei says, sitting back in his chair. “Well then. I see.”

“Thank you!”

“Yes,” he continues, “well, at least I won’t have to explain anything to the children! Now, since you are a good and obedient student, why don’t you go over this pile of mission reports for me?”

**iv. shisui**

“Hey there, cousin,” Shisui says, sliding up to Obito and putting an arm around his shoulders. “Heard from a little birdie that you need a protection detail.”

Cousins, Obito swears, cannot be trusted with secrets. ANBU vows are nothing in the face of the overwhelming power of the Uchiha Cousin Gossip Network.

“When I am murdered,” Obito says primly, “you are going to feel very bad for how you’ve treated me.” And he shrugs off Shisui’s arm.

“I take it you’re turning down the police protection detail?” Shisui yells at his back as Obito stalks off, head held high. “Oh, and Itachi says to tell you to stop letting Sasuke drop his shoulder when he feints, you’re letting him learn bad habits!”

Obito hopes that when his doppelgänger kills him and takes his place, he at least does Obito the solid of tormenting all the cousins. They’ll deserve it.

**v. kakashi**

“Oh, good,” Kakashi says, “you’re here with the groceries. Did you pick up any lemons?”

Kakashi is cooking at Rin’s stove wearing a pair of Obito’s rattiest sweatpants and a yellow croptop that must be Rin’s over his usual dark undershirt and mask.

Obito puts the overflowing grocery bags down on the counter.

“I thought you were in Snow?”

Kakashi smiles opaquely. “I hear you’re marked for death.”

Obito mutters under his breath about senseis who betray their students, and sets to washing vegetables.

“Don’t worry,” Kakashi tells him, “I’ll avenge you. Unless Rin’s the one who kills you, and then I’ll have to help her bury your body somewhere it won’t be found so that Minato-sensei doesn’t have to help us cover anything up. It would look bad on him in the history books.”

“My death will look bad in the history books!”

Kakashi nods. “You’re right. But just think, maybe you’ll secretly escape death only to return later to get your revenge disguised as— Hmm. Well, there are enough Uchiha around, you could definitely pretend to be a distant cousin or uncle or something.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. I’d pretend to be Madara-come-again. It would serve you right.” Obito elbows Kakashi away from the stove. “Stop that, you’re going to burn the rice. Haven’t I taught you better than that? How are you still burning rice?”

“Don’t you have a team practice this afternoon?” Kakashi asks, taking over the task of cutting up vegetables to add to the wok.

Obito shrugs. “The kids can wait, they’ve got some team exercises to work through. If I leave you to this, Rin will murder you when she wakes up to her apartment filled with smoke, again, and then who will be left to avenge me? Anyways, the gremlins are all afraid that at any moment Itachi-kun will be watching them slack off and will appear out of the trees to punish them for their lack of commitment and focus.”

Kakashi hums fondly. “Ah, my little kouhai, I’m so glad he’s imparting my lessons onto the next generation.”

“One day,” Obito tells him, “I am going to tell Naruto-kun all the things that you are at fault for, and I am going to relish as you suffer for it.”

“Nah,” Kakashi says, “I’ll convince him you’re a liar. I’m Naruto-kun’s favourite, he’ll never believe you for long.”

“Rin is Naruto’s favourite,” Obito corrects.

“Rin’s everybody’s favourite,” Kakashi points out.

Obito pouts. “Sakura-chan loves my pancakes, though.”

“You better hope no one comes along who can make decent pancakes, then, or else you’ll have nothing left going for you.”

Obito throws a lemon at him.

Kakashi cuts it in half as it sails easily past him.

**vi. team 7**

“I cannot believe,” Obito shouts, despairing and disbelieving, the half of Training Ground 37 not underwater on fire, “that not one of you noticed that you were being taught by an evil alternate universe version of your beloved sensei!”

His students, all three traitorous brats, are watching safely from a tree on the underwater side of the training ground with rapt attention as Obito’s white haired doppelgänger pins him to the small island of ground neither on fire nor underwater.

“I’m so sorry, sensei!” Sakura-chan squeaks out. “But he brought dango! I thought he was you!”

“Maybe if you weren’t late!” Naruto-kun shouts.

“I noticed,” Sasuke-kun mutters under his breath, “but he promised to show me a new fire jutsu.”

Obito chooses to ignore that last one.

“This is all very fascinating,” says the other Obito, “and unfortunately it is going to be impossible to steal your life, now.”

“Hah!” Obito shouts. “I knew it!”

“However,” the other Obito continues, “it appears that no one is going to complain if I stick around and usurp you.”

“I am complaining, I am complaining right now!” Obito argues.

This cannot be happening to him.

What is happening? What is his life?

“Don’t worry, sensei,” Sakura-chan shouts helpfully, “just think about how much easier it will be to train us when there’s two of you!”

Obito considers this.

“Do you know how to make pancakes?” he asks.

The other Obito stutters, and Obito frees himself, flash stepping back out of range and unfortunately catching his pant leg on fire. Luckily, he is standing next to a small lake from where they’ve remodelled the training ground, and Obito carelessly sticks his leg in.

“Ah,” the other Obito says. “No?”

Well then. Maybe Obito is still in this.

And, oh, is he going to enjoy making this Minato-sensei’s problem.

“You hear that, Sakura-chan? He doesn’t even know how to make pancakes!”


End file.
